Well, quite a bit has happened in the past three weeks since I wrote a column about Tracy and Sunshine Gantt and their efforts to establish Pickens County’s first homeless shelter.

In Sunshine's words, God has been "connecting the dots."

The upshot of it is that someone who read the column got in touch with them and offered a good deal on rental of a building on Pumpkintown Highway. And the Salvation Army and several churches have come on board to work together on the problem.

I figured the folks of Pickens County would come together on it if they knew of the need and saw a way to help, and I was right.

“We’re moving forward,” Sunshine told me.

Tracy and Sunshine, who pastor a small church in Easley part-time and minister to the homeless while supporting themselves with entrepreneurial home-based businesses, had been trying for a while to get support for a shelter in Pickens County. The Salvation Army has been taking people to shelters in surrounding counties when the need arises.

A few days after I wrote about them, the Gantts followed through on their plan to ask the county council for support, and the council offered to help them work together with various other groups to make it happen.

The Salvation Army was at the council meeting, too, and plans were made to set up an advisory committee to come up with a recommendation for the council.

The committee is being coordinated by Denise Kwiatek, director of Pickens County Emergency Management, according to Jim Abbott, social service center director for the Salvation Army of Pickens County.

In addition to New Deliverance Church, the Gantt’s congregation, at least four other churches — Five Points Church, Easley First Baptist, Second Presbyterian and Rock Springs Baptist — have come on board, Abbott said.

The committee also will include representatives from the medical profession, teachers, and other community leaders, as well as from the Dream Center of Pickens County, which operates a more specialized program for homeless people who have committed to staying off drugs and alcohol and working toward finding jobs and permanent housing.

The Salvation Army plans to start out by opening a “warming center” in its facilities at 102 Stewart Drive in Easley, with 12 cots. It will provide a place for homeless people to come in out of the cold on nights when the temperature drops below 35 degrees. Abbott hopes to have that in operation by the beginning of February.

A next step would be to open a day shelter, and eventually a full-time “emergency wellness center," Abbott said.

That would require some fundraising.

Tracy and Sunshine are supporting that effort, but in addition, they plan to go ahead with opening a center at the building that’s been offered to them on Pumpkintown Highway, north of Pickens.

They hope to have that open by the beginning of March. It will be called the Pickens County Shelter of Hope.

Meanwhile, the Salvation Army is heading up the annual homeless count, a national program that works locally through Upstate Continuum of Care in Greenville to provide information for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development about the homeless population.

The count is based on where people who are homeless spent the night on Jan. 24, although volunteers with Upstate Warrior Solutions will be gathering information through the end of the month, asking folks where they stayed that night, Abbott said.

They hope to get a more accurate count this year than in the past, when only a handful of homeless people in Pickens County were willing to fill out the forms.

So things are moving along, and hopefully folks who have no roof over their head, either by misfortune or by choice, will have a place to turn for help, especially when it’s freezing outside.

I can’t tell you how good it makes me feel to have been able to help with this, merely by writing a column. Sunshine wrote me a nice note thanking me “for letting God use” me.

“Because of the article that you wrote and the way you worded it, God has opened so many doors for us,” she wrote. “Everyone we come in contact with said they read your article and it touched them. Wishing you many blessings Ron!”

Here’s wishing you many blessings in return, Sunshine, as well as all those involved with trying to do something to help the homeless people of Pickens County.